Mr. Netanyahu goes to Washington

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a magnificent speech before a supremely warm joint session of Congress this afternoon. The text is accessible here and worth reading in its entirety. The educational value of the speech is incredibly high for those who are willing to listen and learn.
It’s hard to pick a highlight, but here is one passage that makes a point we have made frequently here: “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free and they’re all citizens of Israel. This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong with about the Middle East; Israel is what is right about the Middle East.”
This is a great, Churchillian speech.

Throughout this speech I kept shouting at the TV, “Run, Bibi, run!” He-he-he. We can find a birth certificate for you somewhere, Philadelphia, Hawaii, or what have you. He spoke without a prompter. He’s got some notes. He leans on the podium. What we’re hearing, what you see, here is somebody who’s very at home behind the microphone. He’s entirely comfortable. It’s easy when you actually believe what you are saying. …
There are a lot of things in this speech. It went on for about 45 minutes, and I really do not want to try to paraphrase or repeat it. You really have to hear this speech as given.
It’s a lesson in commitment. It is a lesson in confidence. It is a lesson in statecraft and leadership. This was an epic, epic speech. It was a lesson for Republicans in dealing with President Obama, even though all Netanyahu did was praise President Obama today. That’s all he did. There was nothing partisan in the speech whatsoever other than his obvious love and support for his nation of Israel. But it was filled with humor, it was filled with goose bump seriousness. It ran the emotional gamut, it ran the intellectual gamut. The timing was flawless. Just a fabulous speech. The lesson that is there for people is to say what you mean, to say it confidently, to be fearless, and don’t feel the need to excuse what you think or make excuses for how you feel.

There is much more. Rush also thanked us for Scott’s post this morning on Netanyahu at AIPAC:

I want to go through a quick summary of Netanyahu at AIPAC, and I want to thank the guys at PowerLine for putting this together. At the heart of his speech — you could find this at Powerlineblog.com — at the heart of Netanyahu’s speech is this set of propositions. And remember, brevity is the soul of wit. Shakespeare.